HTPC or media player? same thing?

rG-tom said:
I picked up an ION based HTPC from the members market, based around the asus at3iont-i board, gig o' ram with a 4gb SSD, so no moving parts at all no fans etc, and have stuck XBMC live (ubuntu) on it. Took minutes to set up, pointed it at a network share and it just works, looks absolutely amazing with the Aeon skin and i can add a bluray drive to it, use it for browsing the net should i want to and i know i wont have any problems with codec support, and should I want to complete customisable.

Can't complain at all with the set up for ~150 quid inc postage (and including a normal hdd too that im removing as i dont want any moving parts in it except the Bluray drive)
Click to expand...

nice buy.....but a second hand unit coming in at double the price of one of the AC Ryan's must make you think? All i want is a unit which will stream my music, movies and pictures from a NAS in HD and HD audio. I think this just about covers it all.

I did spec a HTPC up and it came in at around £300ish when you include a nice case and making it silent with SSD's.
 
jaybee said:
I've looked into this before, and I have to be honest...a HTPC just isn't cost effective these days at all. You can pick up HD media players now for £50-£100. Otherwise a PS3 is what £250 new, or even £150 second hand. I have actually been toying with the idea of buying a second broken PS3 (broken blu-ray drive) for the bedroom. These often only go for £40 on ebay and they are a powerful central media hub. OK so they don't play .mkv files natively at the moment, but what with history being made daily over the last week or two with homebrew on the way to PS3, it seems that it may be able to in the near future. I personally use PS3 media server anyway and stream even the highest bitrate .mkv files transcoded on the fly with no issues.

The main reason I won't buy even a media player is that they all seem to come with only 100mb ethernet ports. How pointless. Any network based connective devices I add to my network now I want to be capable of gigabit speeds to future proof. The PS3 is and my home network is/will be soon. For anyone who suggests 100mbits is fine, well I've experienced occasionally high bit rate mkvs bottlenecked by 100mbit lan. OK so the settings in PS3 media server I left compeltely uncapped to see what bandwidth it would use, but it's very possible even now.

There is also the hassle of a HTPC having an OS aka manging it (booting and shutdown times). Noise levels need to be kept low which means spending more money on it or you sacrifice the power of it. It also occupies more space often as well. I spec'd one up recently and it came to in excess of £300 as well.
I just want the cheapest thing that can play my media files via gigabit lan and so far I'm edging towards either a borked PS3 or even an xbox but noise level puts me off this.
Click to expand...

Totally agree with this. I've been looking at media players and also thought about going the htpc route instead but have come to the conclusion it will end up being too expensive. Add all the usual hardware components with silent fans, a nice case that doesn't look out of place, a decent remote and/or keyboard - just not worth it in my book.
 
Reality Bites said:
nice buy.....but a second hand unit coming in at double the price of one of the AC Ryan's must make you think? All i want is a unit which will stream my music, movies and pictures from a NAS in HD and HD audio. I think this just about covers it all.

I did spec a HTPC up and it came in at around £300ish when you include a nice case and making it silent with SSD's.
Click to expand...

I had a hd player in the form of a western digital, it was crap, very fussy with different encodings etc.

Does your AC Ryan allow you to use spotify? How about quickly browse the net so you dont have to have your PC on? What about allow me to plug in usb accessories like my line6 guitar feed so i can play around with that in the lounge too? What about add a bluray rom drive?

HTPCs are far more flexible, no harder to set up and far more futureproof.
 
But unless you need those things are not worth 3 times the price. AC Ryan plays nearly everything thrown at it. gets some web contents and plays internet radio. Doesnt do spotify but thats what the pc is for.

Worth £87 quid over a htpc. But it all depends what you want to do on your main tv.
 
rG-tom said:
I had a hd player in the form of a western digital, it was crap, very fussy with different encodings etc.

Does your AC Ryan allow you to use spotify? How about quickly browse the net so you dont have to have your PC on? What about allow me to plug in usb accessories like my line6 guitar feed so i can play around with that in the lounge too? What about add a bluray rom drive?

HTPCs are far more flexible, no harder to set up and far more futureproof.
Click to expand...

I have has a HTPC in my cinema room check my links in my sig.

Looked very nice but was style over content.

Was laggy buggy and a royal PITA.

Spotify I use the pc for.. My main PC is connected to my ONKYO 876 and my multiroom and all I do is Remote desktop onto it and use spotify from my laptop. I don't need a HTPC for it.

I dont need a BD drive. I have a playstation for Bluray playback in my cinema room.

I want a unit that I can watch films on and browse through a JUKEBOX thats it.

I don't want to be messing with drivers and faffing getting my DTS MA working through my ATI GFX card. I have a home server on 24/7 I don't need another PC in the house for film duties when something for 79 quid can do the job just as good if not better without the need for installing countless codecs etc..
 
DAvE18 said:
But unless you need those things are not worth 3 times the price. AC Ryan plays nearly everything thrown at it. gets some web contents and plays internet radio. Doesnt do spotify but thats what the pc is for.

Worth £87 quid over a htpc. But it all depends what you want to do on your main tv.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Is there regular firmware updates for this?
 
rG-tom said:
I had a hd player in the form of a western digital, it was crap, very fussy with different encodings etc.

Does your AC Ryan allow you to use spotify? How about quickly browse the net so you dont have to have your PC on? What about allow me to plug in usb accessories like my line6 guitar feed so i can play around with that in the lounge too? What about add a bluray rom drive?

HTPCs are far more flexible, no harder to set up and far more futureproof.
Click to expand...

I haven't bought a media streamer yet, but am certainly looking to go that route. I can't justify another £200 plus for the ability to browse the net quickly and plug in other devices. I want the device to view photo's and movies in HD all from a central storage. The only minor negative is that I'd like to be able to get iplayer, but then my TV will be able to get that shortly anyway. I don't need an optical drive in the unit as I have a BD player and can rip anything to the storage to view anyway. This would be in addition to my BD player rather than instead of.

The £200 saving means I have more to put towards a NAS. I was looking at a cheaper end 2 bay version, where I can now look at 4 bay RAID5 enclosures and still save £100-£200 on the cost of a streamer and storage.

each to their own I guess. If i wanted a unit to get a TV pic on, use as a PVR as well as stream etc, then HTPC would be the way to go. for what I need, this is sufficient for now.
 
I have sky HD for my TV PVR duties

PS3 for Bluray and BBCi player

And soon a Playon HD for Movies photos etc..


I have no desire to spend 200+ on another PC for watching films.

The PS3 was fine for watching films but the lack of MKV support and JUKEBOX steered me towards an alternative.


79 quid I got the PLayon HD mini for delivered.

Nearly the cost of a BD drive for a HTPC :p
 
Last edited:
you reckon.....I think it would be over kill for me. I don't want another 'server' in the house running all the time. I just need a solid storage device which has good redundancy. Remote access etc would be nice too though.
 
Reality Bites said:
you reckon.....I think it would be over kill for me. I don't want another 'server' in the house running all the time. I just need a solid storage device which has good redundancy. Remote access etc would be nice too though.
Click to expand...

I have mine in the garage. 8TB

Its awesome.

Dump the media on to the shares over the network and add disks to the storage pool.

remove disks without data loss.

Enable duplication and backup clients around the house and restore them over the network.


Its awesome and I really do not know what I did before I installed it.

It offers so much for so little cost.

You could get a C2D combo in MM for peanuts with 2GB ram and off you go.

With Storage so cheap I see a NAS becoming full when all you can do on the WHS is get rid of old disks and upgrade them hassle free while keeping all your data in tact.

Its amazing and I love it.
 
easyrider said:
I have mine in the garage. 8TB

Its awesome.

Dump the media on to the shares over the network and add disks to the storage pool.

remove disks without data loss.

Enable duplication and backup clients around the house and restore them over the network.


Its awesome and I really do not know what I did before I installed it.

It offers so much for so little cost.

You could get a C2D combo in MM for peanuts with 2GB ram and off you go.

With Storage so cheap I see a NAS becoming full when all you can do on the WHS is get rid of old disks and upgrade them hassle free while keeping all your data in tact.

Its amazing and I love it.
Click to expand...

what about power consumption? I would think running another PC contantly would be around 50p a day?

do you have it running on a SATA raid card? or just the MB? will have to look into the option, but I must admit, I like the idea of a small box I can hide somewhere.
 
Yeah easyrider can you give us more detail on the "WHS" and storage array and costs? I assume by "WHS" you are talking Windows Home Server? Did you ever consider Linux solutions or things like freenas or the other one (name escapes me) ? Is it hardware Raid? Say you have your server with attached RAID storage, how do you back that up though? My plan was going to be to have my PC in the lounge with the same amount of drives/storage as my backup/media server and just to replicate accross the network to the other as a backup solution. The backup/media server will hopefully sit in the loft but I need to get power up there somehow first.
 
easyrider said:
I have has a HTPC in my cinema room check my links in my sig.

Looked very nice but was style over content.

Was laggy buggy and a royal PITA.

Spotify I use the pc for.. My main PC is connected to my ONKYO 876 and my multiroom and all I do is Remote desktop onto it and use spotify from my laptop. I don't need a HTPC for it.

I dont need a BD drive. I have a playstation for Bluray playback in my cinema room.

I want a unit that I can watch films on and browse through a JUKEBOX thats it.

I don't want to be messing with drivers and faffing getting my DTS MA working through my ATI GFX card. I have a home server on 24/7 I don't need another PC in the house for film duties when something for 79 quid can do the job just as good if not better without the need for installing countless codecs etc..
Click to expand...

So to play blurays you need to have a PS3, meaning if you dont you have one,you have to buy one for more money than a htpc cost as well as the streamer. A bluray drive is 40 quid.

if you want to use spotify you need to have your main pc on, and a laptop as you can't RDP from the streamer.

with regards to codecs, i've not installed any, just installed the XBMC live distro and it works straight out of the box, and i can dual boot it with a streamlined XP if i want to for other things but almost everything works from the ubuntu backend of xbmc (ie firefox for browsing etc). Also using a motherboard actually designed for HTPC use ie an atom/ion based one means things like DTS etc work straight out of the box, no faffing.

I can appreciate the problems you may have with a windows based media centre but with dedicated operating systems like xbmc knockin around it's a piece of **** to get working, pretty much the same as a proper streamer bar the ~5 minutes to install the OS, and you're not reliant on ongoing support (ie my western digital hasnt had a firmware update released in over a year so no new codecs etc)
 
Last edited:
You could check out the Foxconn nt330i, it's similar guts to the Revo with atom330 & ion but you can get it for £133 delivered, add in 2gb ram and a 8gb usb stick with xbmc for a pretty cheap htpc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom